BSC Appoints Ricardo Baeza-Yates as Director of New AI Institute
May 27, 2025 -- The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) has appointed researcher Ricardo Baeza-Yates as director of the newly established BSC AI Institute. The institute aims to foster AI innovation through a collaborative research environment that brings together disciplines including biomedicine, climatology, engineering, computational architecture, and the humanities.
Ricardo Baeza-Yates
Previously research director of the Experiential Artificial Intelligence Institute at Northeastern University's Silicon Valley campus, Baeza-Yates is a world expert in responsible AI and data science. His special interests include information retrieval, web search, data mining, data visualization and algorithmic biases and their social impact.
He holds a PhD in Computer Science and is a professor at both Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the University of Chile, where he was the youngest to attain that title. In 2004, he became one of the first researchers to receive an ICREA appointment from the Generalitat de Catalunya. He also served on the Spanish government's AI Advisory Council, contributing to the development of the current national AI strategy.
Since 2006, Baeza-Yates has focused on applied research, translating theoretical work into technological solutions. From 2006 to 2016, he served as Vice President of Research at Yahoo Labs, first in Barcelona and later in Silicon Valley, leading teams of up to 150 people across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. He launched Yahoo’s European lab in Barcelona in 2006 and later helped establish labs in Haifa, London, and Santiago de Chile. From 2016 to 2020, he was CTO of NTENT, a California-based semantic search company, where he also oversaw the opening of its European headquarters in Barcelona.
He has received numerous honors throughout his career, including the ‘Ángela Ruiz Robles’ National Prize for Applied Computing from the Spanish Scientific Society for Computer Science and the BBVA Foundation, as well as Chile’s National Prize for Applied and Technological Sciences. He is a Fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Baeza-Yates has authored more than 600 scientific publications and co-authored the most widely used textbook on information retrieval and search technologies.
More Than 320 AI Experts
The BSC AI Institute was established to advance research excellence in artificial intelligence, building on BSC’s strengths in innovation and interdisciplinary work at the intersection of AI and supercomputing. Its mission includes developing advanced AI solutions for strategic sectors such as biomedicine, finance, climate, and public services, with a focus on aligning technologies with European ethical standards.
As director, Baeza-Yates will oversee the Institute’s development and operations, coordinate collaborations among more than 320 AI researchers across BSC research groups, and support talent development and international partnerships. He will also lead professional development programs and contribute to the deployment and management of the BSC AI Factory, an initiative aimed at providing advanced AI tools to support innovation in the business sector.
His appointment reinforces BSC’s commitment to responsible, equitable, and socially beneficial AI—key to building a more inclusive and ethical society.
Source: BSC
